Wheeled mountaineers

The Trans-Alp mountain bike event is so popular you have to think about reserving a place (and getting into shape) for next year now. Peter Walker bunks up with the locals and pedals twice the height of Everest

Only 50km to go ... a sign indicates a nourishment stop during the precipitous cycling event. Photograph: Trans-Alp

Amid the sea of sleeping bags spread out along the gymnasium floor, one man was standing up, and he cut a very distinctive figure.

Aside from his characteristic cyclist's tan, the balding 40-something was wearing the fabric strap for a heart rate monitor around his chest and precisely nothing else. Dropping to a slight crouch, he began vigorously to rub anti-chafing cream into his naked buttocks.

"Ah," said a voice near me. "This is what they call the real Trans-Alp experience."

While it offers a virtually unrivalled way to enjoy some of the most beautiful mountain scenery in the world, the Trans-Alp is – on more than one level – not for the fainthearted.

The tenth edition of the mountain bike event, this July, saw 1,000 or so riders, myself among them, travel through southern Germany, small sections of Austria and Switzerland before finishing eight days of riding in the north of Italy.

Aside from the distance of nearly 400 miles, most of it off-road, the challenge is the climbing: this year a lung-bursting combined total of nearly 21,000 metres, or two-and-a-bit times the height of Everest.

The attraction of the Trans-Alp is that it is open to cyclists of pretty much any ability and speed. While the professionals chased the prize money at the head of the pack, amateurs like me could trundle round in well over double their time, aiming only to finish.

Finally, of course, there is the so-called Trans-Alp camp, to which my race partner, Barry (for safety reasons, you ride in teams of two), and I had signed up.

A giant tent was a cramped home on one night. Photograph: Barry Neild
With such large numbers of cyclists involved, the small ski towns where most stages finish simply don't have enough hotel rooms. They thus provide a large communal space such as a school or a gymnasium in which several hundred riders can lay down their sleeping mats and bags.

Such accommodation is cheap – little more than £10 a night – and extremely sociable, with men and women from around the globe swapping stories and comparing grazes.

The cost also includes food, although we soon abandoned the evening meals (overboiled pasta served up from giant, prison-style vats) in favour of local restaurants.

The camp is also far from private, meaning even the most personal pre-stage preparations – witness our friend with the liniment – take place in full view of dozens of others.

Such discoveries were ahead of us as Barry and I arrived at Mittenwald station, two days before the start.

Taking a bike on a plane is a perennial headache thanks to worries over damage in transit or arbitrary excess baggage charges. In contrast, our trip – the Eurostar to Paris, a very comfortable German Railways sleeper compartment to Munich and then a connecting local train – was longer but stress free, our bagged cycles travelling with us on racks or in special luggage compartments.

When the race eventually began, on the Saturday morning, seemingly the whole population of the pretty Bavarian town lined up to cheer the riders, a half-mile long snake of brightly coloured lycra, comprising everyone from ultra-fit 20-something professionals to hobbyists in their mid-50s.

The day evolved in a way that would soon become familiar: a frantic massed start until the first steep hill, at which point the field stretched out, most riders simply grinding through the miles as best they could, taking as long as necessary.

Although stages began and ended on the road, the path between would be everything from broad gravel and dirt roads to bumpy forest paths, routes cut through fields of crops and, of course, a never-ending series of precipitous mountain passes.

The Alpine scenery was consistently spectacular. Photograph: Trans-Alp
The scenery was continually, at times almost monotonously, spectacular, even for those familiar with the Alps. Aside from the usual distant snowy peaks and glaciers, some stages took in lush, more gently sloping pastureland and forests. Many of the snaking climbs were shaded woodland tracks, a welcome relief with temperatures well over 30°C (86°F) every day.

We usually took six or seven hours to finish each stage, although there was one infamous day of 11 hours thanks to crippling bouts of leg cramp suffered by Barry, a problem later avoided by carrying twists of salt to replace the minerals sweated out.

Half the experience of the trip came when the riding was over and we discovered where we would sleep that night.

Some billets were almost luxurious – a school with dozens of empty rooms, a massive sports complex with more showers than people to use them.

Others were more basic. One tiny Italian skiing town decided it had nowhere suitable and laid on a handful of giant tents with only just enough room for everyone to bed down.

"You'd get better facilities at a UN refugee camp," a disgruntled Irish cyclist muttered to me as he queued for one of the four portaloos provided.

The biggest surprise came on the night before the final stage. The good people of Folgaria – a small town in northern Italy I have no qualms about naming and shaming – decided we could bed down in an underground car park. They hadn't even bothered removing all the cars.

"It's a good job this is the last night," Barry said as we laid our sleeping mats on the floor, covered in part with a grubby carpet. "At this rate they'd have us sleeping under a bridge or on a park bench."

The next day, all was forgotten as we began the last push towards Riva del Garda, the Italian lakeside tourist resort chosen as the finishing point. While every mile, each foot of climbing, was a painful test for our weary muscles, there was also the knowledge that in a matter of hours it would all be over.

Then it happened – a sprint across the finish line and applause from the spectators who had waited in the heat more than three hours after the winners came past.

Within seconds we had shiny medals hanging from our necks and cold beers in our hands.

You couldn't call it a luxury holiday, or even for the most part a holiday at all. But the scenery, camaraderie and sense of achievement beat two weeks on a beach anytime.

Training tips

"In order to prepare effectively for an epic event like the Trans Alp, you've got to start thinking about it now. You don't have to take a long time over this, but make the effort to sit down one evening for an hour or so and draw up a plan.

"Start by working backwards from the day of the event. You want two clear weeks of little or no riding leading up to the event. Your highest training load (or mileage on the bike) needs to be in the few weeks leading up to this two-week watershed.

"How much riding should you do? In those final three weeks of hard graft, you should aim to do as much as you possibly can. Everyone's time constraints and capabilities are different. Pull out the stops and challenge yourself. Sketch out what you're going to do on your plan and commit mentally to it.

"For the rest of the year? Keep working backwards on your planner to where you are now, making the training easier and easier the closer you get to NOW. When you've finished, read the planner through the correct way round (from now through to the big day) and you'll see that you've set yourself a beautifully progressive plan.

"What kind of training should you do? Anything cardiovascular will help, but the more you do specifically on the bike, the better. Mix up the intensity, so that you do long steady rides combined with shorter more intense sessions."

Getting there

The 2008 Trans-Alp takes place from July 19 to 26 inclusive. Registration for places – which are usually heavily oversubscribed – begins in early December on the race website, bike-transalp.de.

Peter Walker travelled to Germany with Eurostar and then a Deutsche Bahn sleeper train from Paris to Munich.

You may only travel with your bike on Eurostar if it is carried in a bag or case. Deutsche Bahn's sleeper services have a special area for bikes (whether bagged or not); spaces should be reserved when buying the ticket.

· This article was amended on Tuesday October 30 2007. The 2008 Trans-Alp will take place from July 19 to 26, not 12 to 19 as we originally had it in this article. This has been corrected.